Before anything had a name there were two waters, Apsû and Tiamat. A young god splits the sea in two to make the sky, and makes people from a rebel god's blood to do the gods' work.
Press this book. Your gift commissions the Great Library’s word-by-word interlinear Enūma eliš, and the day it is made, it is free for everyone, forever. You are not buying a copy; you are paying for it to exist.
Give what you like. A few dollars helps, or fund the whole of Tablet I and become its Founder. Every contribution presses it closer to real.
This is how every Great Library book reads, word beneath word. Enūma eliš’s own first lines appear here the day its pilot is pressed.
Enūma eliš, “when on high”, is the Babylonian story of how the world began. Two waters, the sweet Apsû and the salt Tiamat, mingle and give birth to the gods. The young gods disturb them, and war follows. Marduk agrees to fight Tiamat if the gods make him their king; he kills her, splits her body to make the sky and the earth, and makes humankind from the blood of her general so that the gods can rest. The press starts with the opening of Tablet I, the splitting of Tiamat in Tablet IV and the making of humans in Tablet VI.
The poem was probably composed in the late second millennium BC and was recited in Babylon at the New Year festival. Copies have been found at Assur, Nineveh, Babylon and Sippar. When George Smith published the Nineveh fragments in 1876 as The Chaldean Account of Genesis, readers saw at once how close it came to the first chapter of the Bible.
Marduk splits Tiamat “like a fish for drying”, sets half of her up as the sky, and posts guards so her waters cannot pour down. Genesis also has waters above a solid sky, and at the flood “the windows of heaven were opened”.
Making an interlinear Enūma eliš is real work: freezing a scholarly source text, aligning every word to its dictionary form, glossing what resists translation, and proofing it all to a hard quality bar. Pressing a book is how that work gets funded. When enough readers press it, Tablet I gets made, and then it is free to read forever, for you and for everyone who comes after.
This isn’t a purchase. It’s a commission. You’re not buying a copy; you’re paying for the thing to exist, and putting your name (if you like) on the first true Enūma eliš that anyone can read for free.
Leave your email and we’ll write to you the day the Enūma eliš opens. No other mail, ever.
Read our finished collection · the library · The Great Library Project
Reading is always free. Patrons and founders are the ones who keep it that way.